Accounting choices in Brazil: identifying the characteristics of publicly traded companies that opted to maintain versus derecognise deferred assets

Abstract

The issuance of Brazilian Law 11.638/2007 is a critical step in the convergence of the Brazilian Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAPs) towards International Financial Reporting Standards. After the law was implemented and later modified by Provisional Executive Order 449/2008 (converted into Law 11.941/2009), certain accounting choices were allowed during the transition period. The Brazilian GAAPs allowed for restructuring costs and costs related to opening a new facility to be recognised as assets. As a transitional provision, companies were allowed to choose between maintaining or eliminating these values. In this paper, we attempted to identify which company characteristics were associated with this accounting choice. The final sample consisted of Brazilian companies listed on the BM & FBOVESPA, and a logistic regression identified two characteristics. Participation in one of the three different corporate governance levels of the BM & FBOVESPA was associated with the choice to derecognise the deferred assets, while companies decided to maintain the deferred asset if it was relatively large. The empirical evidence reported here contributes to the literature by explaining the manner in which a set of firm characteristics is related to a firm's accounting choices.